Paean To Post Rich In Detail, Light On Thought

September 19, 1996|By MATTHEW HAY BROWN; Courant Staff Writer

It's Alive! How America's Oldest Newspaper Cheated Death and Why It Matters

By Steven Cuozzo, Times Books, $25, 342 pp.

New Yorkers awoke on the morning of March 16, 1993, to a strange apparition on the cover of their New York Post. The tabloid notorious for such Page One headlines as ``HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR'' and ``BEST SEX I EVER HAD'' bore just a simple picture: an engraving of founder Alexander Hamilton shedding a single tear.

The mutiny edition, published by a renegade staff protesting the court-ordered transfer of the newspaper to Hirschfeld, brought immediate results. Deposed editor Pete Hamill, seeing his name restored to the masthead, returned to a cheering newsroom to begin work on the next day's paper. And former owner Rupert Murdoch was stirred to buy it back.

Like the newspaper itself, Post veteran Steven Cuozzo's account of events leading to the mutiny is rich in detail but light on thoughtful analysis. It's a good yarn, but Cuozzo fails to keep his promise to demonstrate how tabloid journalism has influenced the mainstream media to the benefit of the American public.

``It's Alive'' begins with Cuozzo's career in 1972, when the young college grad finagles a tryout as a copy boy on the liberal Post of Dorothy Schiff. The paper is uninspired and uninspiring, reaching for respect with sober coverage of public policy while leaving the meat and potatoes of a big-city tabloid -- crime and corruption -- to the rival Daily News.

The Post, and Cuozzo's story, perk up in 1977, with its purchase by Murdoch, owner of London's notorious Sun. The Australian press baron installs a posse of Fleet Street veterans to reshape the paper. The new Post becomes known for eye-catching ``woods'' -- front-page headlines -- and similarly sensational coverage.

Cuozzo calls it the triumph of the senses over the system -- a new journalism that focuses on the individual over institutions. Circulation soars as the new Post becomes a guilty pleasure for New York's young professionals. But not everyone is sold, and the paper arouses the scorn of public officials, business leaders and media peers.

Murdoch relishes the controversy, but overreaches when he buys three New York television stations. Government adversaries, led by longtime sparring partner Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., prevent the Federal Communications Commission from waiving restrictions on cross-ownership of media outlets, and in 1988 Murdoch is forced to sell the Post.

Cuozzo survives the subsequent succession of owners and would- be owners to ascend to executive editor, the position he holds today. Murdoch's return renews hope for the Post's long-term survival; the paper launches a Sunday edition; and Cuozzo declares victory for tabloid journalism.